Album: The Waterboys, An Appointment with Mr Yeats (Puck/Proper)

Mike Scott has been building towards this album-length adaptation of the poetry of W B Yeats for some time now, ever since he included "The Stolen Child" on Fisherman's Blues in 1988.

His selection here takes in both Yeats's mythopoeic side, in tracks such as "The Hosting of the Shee" and "Song of Wandering Aengus", and his more politically engaged material like the nostalgic rebel song "September 1913" and "Politics" itself; but more effective than either is "Sweet Dancer", which was written to dance even on the page, and to which Scott has interpolated an effective bridge created from two other poems. Scott's overly melodramatic delivery sometimes gets in the way of the words, although his arrangements are for the most part respectful and apt.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Sweet Dancer; An Irish Airman Foresees His Death; Politics